Word: comic
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Allen's comic sense operates on the principle of disparity. His heroes are flies intent on building spiderwebs. In Take the Money and Run, he portrays Virgil Starkwell, a man who would get flustered crossing the street, and imbues him with the delusion that he can master the split-second timing, minute detail and cool bravado needed to become a successful bank robber. Result: a criminal so consistently inept that he fails even to make the Ten Most Wanted list...
Since the film consists of one damnable bungle after another, it tends to lose its comic momentum, but there are enough insanely funny moments to sustain the picture. One bank robbery goes excruciatingly awry when Allen and the bank teller get into a testy debate about whether the piece of paper Allen has shoved through the teller's window does or does not read: "I have a gub." Allen's gub is forthwith confiscated, and he begins one of several jail sentences...
...rain with two guards as hostages. He prods them sullenly forward until they turn warily and discover that Allen's pistol hand is a gleaming blob of soap bubbles. And so it goes, with sight gags interspersed with word foolery. The offbeat one-liner is Allen's comic forte, as when he speaks of a girl he was once fond of: "I used to make obscene telephone calls to her, collect." That might not be great comic writing, but it is good enough to take the money...
...concertmaster mercifully took the solo play away from the wounded virtuoso. The Aspen, Colo., audience was delighted by the shenanigans. They had, after all, paid as much as $50 to see and hear Jack Benny's violin act which, like his familiar monologues, is a masterpiece of comic tim ing. Benny, 75, and his fiddle have raised well over $5,000,000 at similar benefits, and this one netted $14,000 for the Aspen Music School Scholarship Fund. Unfortunately, Benny lamented, not all patrons are kind enough to suspend their critical faculties. "In Philadelphia, a woman stood...
Griffin's show, went the pitch, was going to be different. Maybe so, but his premiere appearance did not exactly inundate the audience with originality. First there was Jackie "Moms" Mabley, an oldtime black comic of the Pigmeat Markham variety and hardly a nationwide favorite of the post-11:30 p.m. crowd. At the same time, Carson was cracking wise with Bob Hope, and Bishop was encouraging the Smothers Brothers to pour out their souls on camera. Moms was followed by a curiously subdued Woody Allen, Leslie Uggams, who is taking the Smotherses' place on CBS this fall...